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November 26 Romance Pre-Orders for Early 2008Technorati Tags: romance,Amazon.com pre-orders,Lora Leigh,Sherrilyn Kenyon,BDSM,Dream-Hunters,Tempting SEALs series,Feline Breeds series,Ellora's Cave Breathless with anticipation, waiting on 2008
My original premise is to write about books I have at home, BUT, I absolutely CANNOT WAIT for KILLER SECRETS by Lora Leigh! It's a continuation of the Tempting SEALs series -- Ian's story. If you read HIDDEN AGENDAS, Kell's story, you know KS is bound to be thrilling. And, God bless her, she also has a new Breeds book out -- DAWN'S AWAKENING. Back in the day, Dawn was one of the original group of feline breeds, sister to Shera and Callan. She was very much in the background. But through succeeding books in the series, she has grown up -- to a point. Of all the breeds, she seems to fight her destiny the most -- the fact that one day, she'll mate with someone. Her time has come. Wow! This is gonna be good. Sherrilyn Kenyon's B.A.D. series is pretty cool. It's less frantic than the SEALs stories, more romantic where the SEALs books are more "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am". I love the characters. Between the Dark-hunters, the BADs and Leigh's SEALs, it's too much excitement to be contained between paper covers. Phantom in The Night is the new BAD book. The one area where Kenyon's books have it over Leigh is simple revision. Leigh's books, some published by Ellora's Cave and some by Berkeley, have an astonishing amount of grammatical and spelling mistakes. Using adjectives to describe verbs and all that. It's annoying. Yet, sadly, I don't think too many people are noticing and/or caring. If you don't care, you should. But that's another argument for another day.
November 24 Talking about A Man & His Ball: No Greater Love Pt. 2
Quote A Man & His Ball: No Greater Love Pt. 2 November 19 Are walls the new beds?Rhyannon Byrd
Beauty & The Beast -- feminine lady and hulking male
Pride & Prejudice -- hot, popular guy falls for smart shy girl
This book isn't touted as a comedy, but it's pretty damn funny. It sort of follows the Beauty/Beast/Pride/Prejudice combo formula. Hot, hunky alpha male Ryan McCall falls in love with shy outside/adventuress inside librarian Shea Dresden. Librarian? Didn't Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz play out these parts already? In a movie called...THE MUMMY? How tired is that. Still, it's a cute story. For all that I'm blustering about the lack of originality, it's modern and fun and had a surprise or two up it's sheer sleeve. Not the least of which is the couple who enthusiastically emboss Shea's spinal column into the drywall. No, seriously. Like 4 times. It's brilliant.
PLUS-- if you read my post of November 01: Context clues that a series is in the works, you will have noticed some blaring clues that a sequel might be in the works. Shea's friend Hannah and Ryan's friend Derek were thrown together and made a lot of noise about hating each other. I love secondary plots. I don't know why.
The bookstore scene! Blimey!
Another interesting thing about this book is the erotization of certain male-oriented careers. We know that firefighters and cops and spies have the hero/hunk thing going on, but there's others to consider: FBI agents, detectives, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, military pilots. They are to us what stewardesses, nurses, geishas are to men. In this case, we have Ryan and Derek as ATF agents (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms). And it works just fine. Good with guns. Ready for action. {{{fanning self}}}.
This story could kick-start a honeymoon!
A Little Less Conversation is pretty good. Also has a hint of a secondary relationship.
A Man & His Ball: No Greater Love Pt. 2
Julie & Me, and Michael Owen Makes Three -- by Alan Gibbons, Blue Peter Book Award Winner
The Alan Gibbons books are like FEVER PITCH, JR. A boy. A girl. Liverpool. Manchester Utd. Romeo. Juliet. In track suits. I love these books because of Gibbons application of “Grammar B”, a writing style that flies in the face of traditional grammar. I love how he uses fragments, interjections, punctuation. That especially. He uses punctuation to create an arpeggio of emotional chords. It looks so simple, but any writer worth the title knows he must have worked it out the way Beethoven worked out the final movement of the Ninth Symphony. These books are close to my heart because I lived so many of the moments, both personal and soccer-related. England’s shambolic last minute fumble against Romania in Euro2000. (To this day, my parents still don’t understand why I was yelling at the TV.) Beckham’s tragic spleen venting at World Cup 98. Michael Owen! Phwooooaaaarrrr! Michael Owen. Oooooh, he’s GOR-GEOUS! His sexy smile and big brown eyes on a cover were guaranteed to sell millions of copies of magazines like 442 and Shoot! He’s just so feckin’ hot!
But the dodgy hamstring. The silly crisps commercials. The disastrous year at Real Madrid. Joining Newcastle to work with Alan Shearer (scored pots of goals, but could bore for England) who then retired. Collapsing like a house of cards at World Cup 06. I think he had a vision of what was up the road against Portugal, so his knee did him a favor.
To understand the premise of the novels, you have to understand this tenet of English football culture: one is not allowed to love Liverpool AND ManUtd. At the same time. They are titanic rivals. Cowboys vs. Redskins? Piffle. Lakers vs. everyone? Small potatoes. Mets vs. whoever their rival is? Not a patch. One is not allowed to love Liverpool and Everton at the same time. One is not allowed to love ManUtd (ManYoo) and Manchester City at the same time. That one’s really vicious! City will sic Oasis on you.
Yet -- as an outsider, I strongly believe I can like whichever teams I damn well want to. So here are my teams.
www.arsenal.com www.liverpoolfc.tv www.manutd.com www.realmadrid.com
And if I ever met someone who loved Inter Milan while I love AC Milan? I could live with it. It's called "being an adult". Check it out. I think it might become a trend.
November 18 A Man and His Ball--No Greater Love Pt. 1Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby Julie & Me, and Michael Owen Makes Three Julie & Me: The Treble Year -- by Alan Gibbons, Blue Peter Book Award Winner
FP’s blurb says: In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. Well, thank you, Captain Obvious! I’m sure that women wish a man would write about loving her the way Hornby writes about loving soccer. And I’m going to call it soccer – because that’s what it’s EFFING CALLED!
Here’s an insider secret for you: no one feckin’ cares that we call it soccer while the rest of the world calls it football. In the US, we use two words for the simple reason that WE NEED TWO WORDS. That’s it. No drama. No language academy rapping our knuckles. No wanking anglophilic snobbery. So all you language snobs, put your snobbery to good use and get rid of “y’know”, “so, like”, “get your ____ on”, “you go, girl/guy”, and all those other pimply, urban adolescent brain farts.
But, so, like…yeah, Fever Pitch. The blurb on the American paperback edition (ISBN 1573226882) was written by a man – you can tell. The standard male-friendly phrases make up the bulk of the paragraph.
“No pads, no prayers, no prisoners.” Personally, I think it would have been more dramatic if the writer had separated the items with periods instead of commas.
“life-long obsession” “incisive analysis of insanity” Is the writer auditioning for Monday Night Football? “fandom” The writer is a young-ish man. Maybe a Gen-Xer? “coming-of-age” Men place a lot of sentiment on their rites of passage. Must be some Jungian-primal-hunter/gatherer thing. It’s not bad, just not original.
The blurb is basically a string of clichés about sports and sports stories. And, there’s nothing in it for women. You have to go beyond the blurb. There’s an utterly pointless quote from some slag (maybe) at ELLE magazine who calls it “Utterly hilarious”. But it’s not “utterly hilarious”. It’s amusing, sensitive, thoughtful, introspective, interesting, exciting, and clever. It makes you chuckle. It makes you feel smart when you get the in-jokes. What it ain’t, is “utterly hilarious”. If it’s utterly anything, it’s utterly clever.
I quite like GQ’s quote: “read-bits-out-loud-to-strangers funny” “highly perceptive and honest” http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/Daily_News
Under the covers, I like the way the story is organized by Arsenal games. Each chapter has to do with an Arsenal game and what was going on in the life of Rob. There’s hardly any dialogue. It’s almost all rumination. How self-absorbed is that! There’s tons of name-dropping of famous soccer players – the giants and jesters of the sport. Yep, you’re going to feel really smart about English soccer when you’re done with this book.
November 12 IN A NUTSHELL: Sept. 30 to Nov. 11Thanks to Maki of www.doshdosh.com for writing about the benefits of roundup posts. Here's a compendium of my most recent titles.
My inaugural post! A huge leap. I’ve been uneasy at how I don’t read as often as I used to. Not that I need a reason, but this is a very satisfying way to get back in touch with my collection.
These were my first batch of posts. Stylistically varietal as I was still finding my feet. I’m looking forward to doing more shopping spree posts in future.
With these most recent posts, I'm starting to exercise more design consistency. I spend a lot of time setting up links. It’s a hassle, but it’s worth it if easy links lead to people going after these books.
One of the best things about my new hobby so far is that I wrote a poem – my first in about 2 or 3 years. I composed it as a book review: DATE 12 October TITLE Different Hours/Same Minutes CATEGORY Books in The Bedroom
O the utter mundane! O the utterer of mundane! Name-dropping, and school-boy writing lessons. Weltschmertz and bagels. Oi!
Anamorphic anaesthesia Like fog, drifting, coating Cuddling dullness and stunted wonder.
Sinatra sings "It was a very good year." --for red-blooded boys, martinis in hand Snapping to the band, pretending life is grand.
What. Ever.
Artfully big words artfully dropped Like chocolate morsels; make sure you Pick up each one. Don't let them go to waste. A paragraph at the least for each.
I'm not saying a monkey could do it. That would be absurd. They know better than to labor pointlessly. Who learns from who, then?
I’d love to know what you think so far.
' Leave a comment. (Click the phrase under individual post.) ' Old-fashioned e-mail: swetergrl86@hotmail.com
November 10 Pen & Paper in Perfect AccordI keep a smallish libaray in my classroom. As an English teacher, I teach writing straight from the source -- literature. I haven't used a textbook in 2 years and I haven't missed them at all; my students either. Most of the books I buy from Scholastic. Visit my MINI-MALL for other sellers.
We use the books to analyze and practice writing styles. By the end of the school year, students have a sigfinicant repertoire of sentence and organizational styles at their disposal. This is just a short list from the top of my head.
November 09 Triple Distilled Creative Energy in Powerful Surges of ProseCoyote v. Acme. Aaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahaha…snort…hahahahaha! Heeheeheeheeheeheehee ooooohoohoohoohoohoo aaaawww …cough…ffffffffffffff hih hih hih hih hih hih hih.
Ian Frazier. Bwaaaaahahahahaha. Eeeeeeeeeeeee HAR!
Whew! My stomach hurts now. Take THAT fancy-schmancy spell checker. *Dr. Evil laugh. *
Damn, I wish I could remember what led me to buy this book. I remember it wasn’t anything particularly special. I have a vague memory of probably reading either a review of it – or an excerpt. Yeah, hard to get much more vague than that. I flatter myself that I have discovered a gem. It’s simple and beautiful in its execution. Like Hornby’s POLYSYLLABIC SPREE and HOUSEKEEPING VS. THE DIRT (September 2007 entry), it’s a compilation of writing pieces previously published in other, uh, publications. (“Please allow myself to introduce myself…) There are so many reasons to love this slim tome. Chief amongst them being – it’s short. It’s slim. It takes up very little room in a purse, a glove compartment, a briefcase, a backpack.
Most chapters are only a page or 2. You can take in whole paragraphs at a glance, so they are perfect for reading at red lights or when you’re stuck in traffic.
The cover is instantly recognizable and fills people with that happy, sappy sentimentality that fills you when you think of your favorite cartoons. Everyone loves Warner Bros. Cartoons. And if you don’t – you should, you uncouth, classless philistine. Hell, even the title font is from the cartoon! It’s completely and utterly brill.
Good book for people with A.D.D. Adult Doughnut Deficiency. No, really, so…hey, I was driving by Krispy Kreme and I thought hot choccy and 3 glazed doughnuts would be so good, but then my cell phone rings – wait – it wasn’t my cell phone, it was my watch. Did you know Patek Phillipe watches – an everyday model retails for …
Oh, right. Coyote. Speaking in tongues. Evil laughter. Demonic possession. Life insurance. Reminiscing about golf. You can’t make this stuff up! Or can you… Even – does he dare? He does; he does! Classic literature rendered illiterate! Or do I mean subliterate? Indeed, what gall! What chutzpa. It’s enough to give you shpilkes in your geneckteckessoink." But in a good way, y’know?
So go get a copy and stick it – wherever the hell you want to. It’s THAT good.
Click on the book's link at The Festering Book Browser. November 03 Grapes in a glass and shameless name-droppingWINE FOR DUMMIES -- and for the rest of us, too! Wine, good wine, is one of those creations that makes life worth living. There's so many; so much to know. So I got a copy of WINE FOR DUMMIES from You-Know-Where.com. I've never been fond of the "for Dummies" title because I'm not a dummy. But, the book does what it advertises. It tells me everything I WANT to know, plenty of stuff I SHOULD know, and lots of things I'm EXCITED to know. For example, there's a section on corkscrews. The one I have does a good job if I get the screw in just the right spot. (A wine cork's sweet spot is the center of the cork. Be careful that the screw doesn't skew sideways!) The worst type is the plain corkscrew -- no leverage. Better ones are the screwpull (combo corkscrew with prongs) and the "Butler's Friend" (prongs only). Then, on page 101 (2003/3rd ed.), there's a bit titled "The most professional corkscrew of them all". OMG! That's the one I have! It's called "The Waiter's Corkscrew". It's a bit like a girly swiss army knife. It has the standard curly screw, a knife to cut foil around the mouth, and a piece that looks like a bottle opener -- which is what gives you the leverage to pull out the cork. You still have to get the curly screw in just right, brace the bottle opener bit against the lip and pull. Good leverage, not that much muscle to pull out the cork. However, you have to be careful not to bend the curly screw. Another great thing about this book is that you can read it in pieces. It's not meant to be a novel. You can pretty much cover your eyes, and drop a finger into the table of contents. Yet, organizing so much information and minutiae does have its challenges. Some of the pages contain so much graphic design, your eyes are not sure where to look first. There's lists, bullet lists, charts, grey boxes, marginalia, tables, titles, titles almost indistinguishable from subtitles. Phew! The grey box on p.212 should have been placed closer to the beginning of the book. It's one of the most interesting blocks of information in the entire book, and it really helped me understand the philosophy of winemaking. Other useful bits are the tearaway cheat sheet at the beginning and plenty of blank pages to jot down notes. Also, the margins are quite wide, which is great for writing notes to self. In keeping with the earthy humor (humor de terroir) -- sorry -- the section pages feature wine-related comics from THE 5TH WAVE. The appendices could make a book all their own. Pronounciation chart (btw, you don't have to come all the way to the back for that. Whenever an important foreign word is introduced, a pronounciation guide is right next to it! Sweet! A well-filled glossary, vintage chart, and painstaking index. If you're like me, you don't bother with tables of contents. I go straight to the index. Tables of Contents are like topic sentences. They don't help you find specific information, they just hand you a road map and send you on your way. I'm ok with being a wine dilletante. The difference between me and the experts has been reduced to the fact that they've had more practice. Wine snobs are done and dusted. Their time is over. It's time to open up your minds like you open up your noses. Click on the link for this book at The Festering Book Browser. November 01 Context clues that a series is in the worksHere's a list of clues that let you know a series is a strong possibility -- or a least a sequel.
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dark Hunters) Lora Leigh (Feline Breeds, Wolf Breeds, Coyote Breeds, Tempting SEALs), and Lori Foster (Visitation, Buckhorn Brothers, Winston Brothers) are the current queens of this mode d'emploi.
October 31 Honk if you love that real men do it better! Ooooookkkkkaaaayyy. God, I hate that I get my writing ideas at the same time I should be going to bed. It's not like I'm on summer vakay or anything. So I caved and bought Honk if You Love Real Men and Real Men Do It Better. Lora Leigh, a writer I enjoy, but take with a golfball-sized grain of salt, has a story in each that are part of the Tempting SEALS series that includes:Dangerous Games
Hidden Agendas
Killer Secrets (coming soon)
I blogged about anthologies on 7 October. In a nutshell, they're the equivalent of writing an essay the night before as opposed to taking 2 or 3 days to really set it out in depth. Plus the fact that the more stories that are included, probably the more you'll regret spending money on it. And I really think that series are being done to death. Tempting SEALS is one of the best series I have read. Lori Foster's Fighters of the SBC is quite popular, but I've only read Simon Says.
At the end of the day, though, anthologies are good for people like me who have an inconsistent attention span. Being that it is almost midnight and I have a quite good day job, I'll save my brilliant idea for tomorrow. It's so brilliant, it has a PhD in Brilliance from Cambridge University. Not only that, but on its roof is a huge billboard that can be seen from Canada... and Neptune.. that says "THIS IS A BRILLIANT IDEA! Spelled out in blinking lights, of course.
"Books are, let's face it, better than anything else."
Nick Hornby~The Polysyllabic Spree
[This blog is a hobby. I have no business or personal connection with amazon.com other than being a customer. I am not making any financial profit from any of this. These are just books I have around the house.] October 29 A Hefty Arsenal of Humor by Richard ArmourSome time back I picked up a couple of slim paperbacks called TWISTED TALES BY SHAKESPEARE and ENGLISH LIT RELIT. I loved how Armour skewered the lofty ideas and even loftier prose. He brought it all down to earth, but amazingly, at the same time, swung open that back door to understanding that some of us just... need. The parodies and satires were as laser-guided poniards, poking holes in bloated balloons of intellectual pretense. Yep, I really dig that.
I understand jokes. I have since I was a kid. I learned about people and life's many hypocrisies from MAD magazine. Because I understood the joke, I understood the idea they were making fun of. Or maybe it was the other way around...
So I got on WWW.HALF.COM and looked for more books by this Armour dude. Damn. First of all, my two books were written in the 60s and reprinted in the 70s. Looking up more of his books took me back in time. I managed to get hold of THE CLASSICS RECLASSIFIED -- in hardcover no less! from www.eBay.com and last week, I ordered PUNCTURED POEMS and IT ALL STARTED WITH NUDES. They are old. But that's cool. I like old books. Reminds me of my parents' closet.
PUNCTURED POEMS is quite amusing. The annotations at the bottom of the page are usually funnier than the poem parody itself. It's a good book to have in the bathroom (if your habits run to that sort of thing) because it's a couplet, an illustration and the funnier annotation at the bottom. And the illustrations are quite good too -- very New Yorker-ish, with spare lines and wonderfully comic expressions. Cambell Grant illustrated NUDES, and Eric Gurney illustrated PUNCTURED POEMS.
I have the in the living room because they are good books to have when I feel like reading AND watching TV. They're cleverly written, the humor satisfies in a big way, cute illustrations, and the reason they are good for multi-tasking -- when you look at a page, you can take in most of what it says at a glance.
October 12 Different Hours -- Same MinutesDIFFERENT HOURS -- Poems by Stephen Dunn (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Like all good albums, this book has its title track smack in the middle. Dunn's poems are filled with a kind of
unfurling wonder at his own perceptions. On first reading, it's very pleasant -- simple words, simple phrases,
simple humor. On 2nd reading, the tar begins to seep to the surface -- the rhetoric of powerlessness,
of the unwilling spectator, the confused man who has seen too many changes and not enough that helps him
make sense of them. On 3rd reading, familiarity breeds contempt. The name-dropping pokes out; all the songs
start to blur together like separate movements of the same piece of music. Unity is supposed to be good, right?
When does unity become a rut? When does motif morph into child-of-baby-boomer whining. I'll tell you when.
If you can't find anything to relate to in these poems, yeah, it's going to sound a whole lot like
September-of-my-years whining.
And yet...
There's a quiet comfort in reading these poems. The simple, familiar language. The sense of humor that stems
the seep of melancholy. For someone like me, trained in operatic melodramatic fin-de-siecle verbiage of
European literature, Dunn's words settle on my spirit like a favor that's been a long time coming -- the kind that
feels like a weight lifted off your shoulders.
Or put another way...
O the utter mundane!
O the utterer of mundane!
Name-dropping, and school-boy writing lessons.
Weltschmertz (sp?) and bagels. Oi!
Anamorphic anaesthesia
Like fog, drifting, coating
Cuddling dullness and stunted wonder.
Sinatra sings "It was a very good year."
--for red-blooded boys, martinis in hand
Snapping to the band, pretending life is grand.
What. Ever.
Artfully big words artfully dropped
Like chocolate morsels; make sure you
Pick up each one. Don't let them go to waste.
A paragraph at the least for each.
I'm not saying a monkey could do it.
That would be absurd.
They know better than to labor pointlessly.
Who learns from who, then?
But that's just me, innit...I mean, it did win a Pulitzer.
October 08 The Party, After You Left -- Song of the Fringe-dwellerThe Party, After You Left -- Song of the Fringe-dweller
Being a fringe-dweller has its perks. You're in a position to see most of what's going on. You have the advantage of perspective that people in the thick of things can't see. The downside is that man is a social animal, and fringe-dwellers are notoriously wallflowery. They belong to no one and no one belongs to them -- except maybe other f-ds.
Today, I was an F-D -- but I didn't want to be. I really, really didn't want to be. I don't know why today was my day to be the enforced loner. My perfume too strong? My expression too unwelcoming? Every one of my colleagues who looked at me today decided to sit somewhere else. I basically spent 3 hours pretending I could care less.
When I got home, this book was on my dresser -- THE PARTY, AFTER YOU LEFT; a collection of cartoons by Roz Chast. I love Chast's style. She's the artist for Deutsche Grammophon's "Mad About..." classical music series. She's been published in "The New Yorker" countless times. That she has put many of her best illustrations together in a book is a glorious event to me.
If you need a theme, I guess it could be the many facets of ennui -- that non-feeling/non-emotion. It's such a non-sensation of utter nothingness. You're not happy; you're not depressed. You're not interested; you're not disinterested. It's like sitting in body-temperature water -- there's nothing to FEEL!
How does that apply to my morning? I had to achieve a state of suspended animation in order to not notice I had a whole row to myself. I can't even ask them why because then they would know that it bothered me and that's just not an option. But I feel better after looking through this book. It's cathartic. A safe drain of all the negative energy.
October 07 Anthologies -- a good way to sell crap storiesThis week I was reminded of why I should not waste good shekels on anthologies. You buy the book for 1 story; the other story is halfway decent; then there's the one that's complete freaking INCOMPREHENSIBLE. WTF?! I've read a handful of these and the best/decent/rubbish formula is a given. I should have bought the book on eBay or from an Amazon alternative seller, except that sometimes they poke your eyes out with s&h fees.
So in this anthology -- HOT SPELL (excuse me while I die laughing), the BEST story is "The Breed Next Door". I'm not satisfied with the ending, but overall, very pleasant. "Falling For Anthony" and "Blood Kiss" are long-winded with glimpses of interesting vampire and paranormal stuff. "The Countess's Pleasure". Omigah! There's an hour and a half of my life I'll never get back. I read on, imploring the story to make some sense. But no. It was a crapfest from beginning to end. If I decide to keep the book, I'm tearing out the 3 waste-of-time stories and keeping the Lora Leigh. Really, what else can you do? The cover is on my book list if you want to check it out. Good professional books for english teachers #1Everyone thinks they can write if they have to. And when they realize that they can't, they dismiss it as a waste of time or pointless. Sometimes English teachers can write -- sometimes they can't. Just because you can do the research and compile the stats, you're entire report can still turn out to sound like complete and utter bollix. And then you write a book. Lord, save us!
THE LITERATURE WORKSHOP--TEACHING TEXTS & THEIR READERS by Sheridan Blau is not bollix. Not even close. It's a work of philosophy and research, full of wisdom, humor and irony.
I had the pleasure of being in a workshop with Mr. Blau and it gave me my teaching heart back, the inspiration to coach students into better writing in order to be dazzled by their own creativity.
There's tons of books out there for English teachers. Most of them are written by EX-teachers. Researchers. Data junkies. This book is written by someone who's still actively teaching. That alone warrants an examination of this text heavy, yet easily digestible books. October 02 Amazon.com -- enabler of impulse buyingWhat can I tell ya. When it comes to Amazon.com, self-control is some abstract "thing" that happens to others. Here's a few goodies I picked up. I read them, then trade them. If the plot is really, really good, I'll hang on to them for a while. What I'd really like to do is sell them on eBay eventually -- once I figure out how to set that up. Apparently, there are some fees involved.
Hot Spell -- anthology with stories by Lora Leigh, Shiloh Walker, Meljean Brook
-- do I really need to read about it if I already live it? I live in a desert as it is. Don't guess you can make a romantic title with "snow" in it.
Simon Says -- Lori Foster
-- don't nobody tells me to do nuttin I don't wanna do. Except for the hawt! guy with the 8-pack.
Dangerous Lover -- Lisa Marie Rice
-- that remains to be seen. I already have a problem with the cinderella theme of this story and I've only finished 2 chapters.
Harmony's Way -- Lora Leigh
-- a fantastic series, but not every story is created equal. I like series, but this one is out of control -- different series that share characters, 2 different publishers. Sheesh!
Soul Deep -- Lora Leigh
-- part of the same series as Harmony's Way, but a different publisher and a different segment of characters yet still related. I enjoy the challenge of trying to keep up with all these different sets of characters...wait...do I?
Shopping Spree at Barnes & Noble 23 Sept.442 magazine: New season issue Plato & Platypus Walk Into A Bar…~ Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes By Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein Love & Blood By Jamie Trekker Rotten English: A Literary Anthology By Dohra Ahmad, ed. The Rough Guide to Blogging By Jonathan Yang The Miracle of Castel di Sangro By Joe McGinniss Dangerous Games By Lora Leigh
October 01 September 07: It was a very good month!Disclaimer: I am an adult so the books I read are for grown-ups. My musings are geared towards other adults unless otherwise stated. That being the case, if you are a child/adolescent/teenager -- call it what you will -- keep in mind that children are not grown-ups and child reasoning is very different from adult reasoning.
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
Books Bought:
Alternatives to Grading Student Writing Ed. By Stephen Tchudi Lanterns & Lances By James Thurber JAG: Clean Steel By Robert Tine Tanner’s Scheme By Lora Leigh The War Against Cliché By Martin Amis Heroes: Riley By Lori Foster Books Read
Silk & Steel (my first fanfic) JAG: Clean Steel Alternatives to Grading Student Writing Tanner’s Scheme The War Against Cliché Heroes: Riley
JAG:CLEAN STEELA short novel by Robert Tine based on the CBS television show that ran from 1995-2005.
JAG: Clean Steel is a novelette based on the TV show that I love and cherish, as a part of my San Antonio life and because of the massive, all-consuming crush I had on David James Elliott. I ordered a second copy as they are becoming scarce and therefore, pricey. I have two copies of the other novelette, the first one, simply called JAG: The Novel, also scarce and pricey. Check out eBay. Check out the prices for these insiders-only gems. It’s enough to make one feel like part of an exclusive in-crowd if you have them in your collection. After the final season of JAG is out and there’s no more to be had, there’s a good chance that asking prices for these little paperbacks could become rather exciting.
The plot would make a great 2-parter. Harm, Mac and Bud have to investigate a possible homicide in an Arctic research station manned by Americans and Russians. Like an opera, it starts slow and things build, and by the time you get to the last two chapters, it’s like the last 20 minutes of a soccer game – restless, anxious, impatient, ready to throw caution to the winds and just run, run, run! Pretty exciting stuff. (I know I’m mixing metaphors, but I know which ones to mix and which ones to not, so it’s okay.)
Note to shippers: shipper moments are pretty much non-existent. Harm and Mac in the same room is about as shipper as it gets. Sorry. But the author IS a man. If the story had been written by Lori Foster or Lora Leigh or Angela Knight, it might have been a different story – literally.
My first fanfic based on characters from the WB’s Tarzan which ran for 8 episodes in Oct. & Nov. 2003.
Writing this story is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. It was done in pieces over the course of two years, starting with the board meeting scene. One day in the summer of 2004, I was with my mom at her friend’s office. She was doing some work on the computer and I was at loose ends. I had an idea running around my head for a while – a relationship between Richard Clayton’s henchman, Patrick Nash, and Richard’s sister Kathleen. Several other fanfics had put Kathleen together with Sam Sullivan, but that never felt right to me. He was younger, for a start. Also, the way I pictured her character, she couldn’t be with someone who was “just” a detective. She had to be with someone who’d been around the world. Someone beyond a beat cop. Someone who was his own boss. And so Nash started to take shape.
On the show, he was one-dimensional. In my story -- not so much. The entire board meeting scene and subsequent restaurant scene I wrote in one afternoon while my mom was getting her Microsoft Word on. After that, it was work. Hard work. Every scene after that had to follow naturally and logically. “Naturally and logically” is hard slog. It’s like engineering. It’s also exciting and completely absorbing.
Then there’s the dialogue. I have read a lot of romance books where the hero is the only one capable of wit – or something approaching wit. That has changed, thank God, with authors like Sherrilyn Kenyon. Kathleen and Patrick are very intelligent, fast thinkers, decisive. They are also New Yorkers. Fast and sharp with a comeback. Because of their careers, they can spot a phony from a mile off. I loved that they were witty together – with each other. I had to inject some humor into the story so I wouldn’t be bored.
I loved writing this story for them, about them. It took me several months to complete it, and when I read it now, it’s like going through a scrapbook of happy memories, remembering how it felt to write certain scenes, the joy of enthusiastic feedback.
A collection of essays about how to respond to student writing.
What a yawn-fest. I shoulda knowed. Before I talk about the lack of attractive design in this desiccated pile of nerd-speak, let me just say, this book could have been seriously condensed and still kept the main points intact – and easier to find!
I’m reading this to prepare for a workshop I’m going to teach on easing the paper-grading load on English teachers. You have to be an archeologist to dig out and dust off the main ideas of these essays. They are professionally done. They sound very scientific, but that’s not really what the reader needs. If it’s called “Methods”, show me the methods already! Don’t force me to wade through a swamp of dissertation-style rhetoric to get to one sentence that says, “Growth-based assessment is the ideal response to student writing.”
I assume someone who’s experienced in English has written that statement. What the F*&^ does it mean??? Where am I supposed to go with it? Wait! Slog through four more paragraphs that reiterate the idea in even less meaningful language until you get to something along the lines of “NCTE feels that grades should be abolished, but we are pretty sure that will not happen.” WTF??
I’m not done with the book yet. It’s best read as needed, not from cover to cover.
This is one of Lori Foster’s earlier works – from her larval stage. It’s not bad, but after having read several Lora Leigh books, Foster’s story of a ex-SWAT-now-crime-scene investigator comes across as, well…larval. I’m almost to the end of the story and Riley has done almost all of the work – all of the seducing, and the heroine, Regina, just sort of says, “okay” and falls into his arms. Considering how it was written earlier in the decade, it’s very old-fashioned. The man is manly and the woman is very swoony. The characters are written in a vague Rochester/Jane Eyre mold in that he has a secret and she wants to love him, if she can just get him to come to terms with his past.
I like it. It’s a relaxing read. It’s sugary, but it’s a breath of fresh air to see people easing their way into a relationship and having conversations instead of being punched in the face by “the lust that would not be denied” sort of attitude. Think about it. Lust or no lust, most people stumble into relationships. I could grow quite fond of Riley. He always knows just the right things to say to get your attention.
Now that I think about it, MEN should read this book. Don’t let your man read the Lora Leigh books. You’ll have to call in late or sick to work all the time, and you’ll get fired.
September 30 Welcome to The Festering Blurb: Bursting Open with Pungent Prose!There's nothing quite so exhilerating as jumping feet first into an exciting -- and scary -- new endeavor. Nothing quite so stimulating as exploring new intellectual territory. The freedom to write whatever I want about something I love makes me positively giddy!
To celebrate the grand opening of my blog, I'd like to present the two books that inspired me to take the plunge into this blogosphere.
THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE
  I like to refer to these as "books for people who hate books". They are so easy to read, so funny, so full of what teachers call "voice".
Technical details:
Author: Nick Hornby
Thumbs from www.amazon.com (Can't live without it!)]
Related to: Believer magazine www.believermag.com
Price: $14.00 USD
These books actually have quite good blurbs. Informative, descriptive, and personal. It helps that Hornby is one of those writers that makes it all look so easy -- that's a sure sign that he sweated over every sentence. Writing is one of those processes where there's so much going on beneath the surface. Creativity, self-doubt, self-confidence, confusion, rationalization, endless questioning, crippling nitpicking -- all of it festering beneath the surface, inflaming the spirit. On the verge of bursting.
And so, THE FESTERING BLURB has spurted to the top of my list of creative projects.
I want Hornby to come out with at least a couple more of these types of collections. He writes for Believer magazine and these books are collections of his columns. They are not just about the books, they are about the habits of a regular guy who makes his life reading and reviewing books.
Creative people have a lot on their minds. It just goes with the territory, so don't condemn them too much for their spaciness. Creativity makes its own rules. With that caveat in mind, Hornby includes hilarious asides that map the vast territory of his inner world. There's so much in those books that is quotable. There are so many "Oh yeah, me too!" moments. That's why if you don't read, you should read these books. He is an "allesmensch" -- I think that's the expression. (I just made it up based on what I know about German linguistics.) He kvetches, he rationalizes shamelessly, he coins bizarre words ("Dylanologist"). What's not to love?
I may or may not add more to this later on. I reserve the right.
"Books are, let's face it, better than anything else."
Nick Hornby~The Polysyllabic Spree
[This blog is a hobby. I have no business or personal connection with amazon.com, Believer magazine or Nick Hornby. I am not making any financial profit from any of this. These are just books I have around the house.] |
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